16. Load "RockMossy0021_Bump.jpg” into the slots for Bump, Diffuse Roughness, and reflection Glossiness.  Load "RockMossy0021_Tiled.jpg” into the Diffuse Color slot.  Now Select the Ground Plane Object, and apply a UVW map.  Go to Bitmap Fit, and choose the "RockMossy0021_Tiled.jpg”.  Now, go to the Gizmo Sub Obj, and use the scale tool to adjust the map size to your liking.  I would up the scaling to 20% of the original size (Fig.20 & Fig.21).


17. Time to play with the light settings.  For more contrast in the image, decrease the Sky Light Multiplier to .5.  Increase the mr Area Spot multiplier to 1.5.  Also no light is pure white (well except maybe LED's) so add a tiny bit of yellow to the Spot Color (Fig.22).


18. With a light source like this there will be some softening of the shadow edges.  Under Area Light Parameters, check On.  Set type to Disc, and adjust the radius to 2.5 (Fig.23).


19. Now time to start adjusting the quality settings.  First fix those jaggies.  Under the Render tab of the Render Dialogue, set the Samples Per Pixel to Min: 1 and Max: 16.  Change the Filter Type to Mitchell.  Switch to the Indirect Illumination Tab, and adjust the FG Precision to Medium (Fig.24).



20. For the final step (if you really want to get crazy with the render times) go to the Multi-Pass Effect section of the Camera Settings.  Check enable, and drop down to Depth of Field (Mental Ray).  Set the F-Stop to 2.5 for a small blur.  Grab the camera target, and set the UCS to Local.  Move the target to wherever in the scene you want the focus to be.  You may have to increase your anti-aliasing settings to remove the noise from the blur (Fig.25).

Fig. 25

Free tutorial file to download - click the above image